CUPCAKES? No thanks. They look tempting enough, with their pastel colours and sparkly bits and creamy swirls, but bite into one, and what have you got?

“Bland vanilla sponge or, if you’re lucky, bland chocolate- flavoured sponge. With icing,” says cupcake queen, Emily Pickard.

A WI friend won’t even discuss them. “Cupcakes?

There’s no such thing.

They’re buns, in my book.

Fancy buns.” And she shudders, as only a WI member can.

So when Emily asks me to try a couple for myself, because the ones she makes with her mum, Barbara, are different, I accept reluctantly and for research purposes only. They can’t be that different. Can they?

First up is ginger and orange, with a little gingerbread man on top and – here’s a surprise – tiny slivers of ginger running through the cupcake itself, which is so golden and sticky and delicious I get carried away and eat the lot, forgetting to photograph the inside. Oh dear: that means a bite out of the other as well, a dinky little Christmas cake-y one with a sprig of holly and a berry on its snow-white icing.

“That,” warns Barbara, as Emily hands it to me, “is fat-free.” We exchange a look that says “fat-free, taste-free.”

“It is an experiment and it might not have worked,”

says Emily, 23.

There’s really only one way to find out...

Oh yes, it works. But of course it needs several bites to appreciate fully the variety of textures and flavours; the tiny bits of fruit, peel, nuts, cherries, a hint of cinnamon and even marzipan.

These are but two of the 40 varieties that Emily and Barbara experiment with, and which pour forth from their tiny Aysgarth kitchen and find their way to summer fetes and Christmas fairs and table-top sales all over Wensleydale, as Nanna B’s Cupcakes. “Nanna B.

That’s me!” says the sixtimes granny with pride.

“We didn’t want to do sponge cakes with dollops of flavoured icing on top. We wanted it to be a wholecake experience so the flavour and the texture goes right through the bun,” says Emily. Cookies and cream, ginger and orange and a whole range based on proprietary brands such as orange or mint Aero, After Eights and Rollo – all baked into, and adorning, the delicious little cakes.

“Her brain never stops,”

says Barbara. “You can hear it ticking over. Always experimenting, always creating.

We never know if a new idea is going to work, but mostly it does.”

Mum’s brain is clearly ticking over as well, though two years ago it nearly didn’t.

Disaster struck at two o’- clock one morning as she suffered a cardiac arrest and stopped breathing. Airlifted to the James Cook Hospital she spent five days in a coma, two weeks in hospital and now has a pacemaker and defibrillator.

It put an end to her work as a professional cook, but spelt a new beginning in the great cupcake experiment.

“The illness definitely changed me, but I couldn’t sit around doing nothing,”

says the 54-year-old mother of four. “I can’t do too much so this is just ideal.”

They can do special occasions to order – weddings, birthdays anniversaries – and are happy to discuss flavours, colours and themes for any occasion.

They’re muffin-size, and at fetes or on market stalls they sell for £1 each or six for £5.